Has Game changed or have I & Queen interview

Has Game changed or have I?

I have been a gamer for a long time. I was playing Vic 20 games in the 1980s and my 1990s was a gaming decade dominated first by the Commodore Amiga and subsequently the Sony Playstation. I used to visit video and computer game stores a lot. This was a time when you could buy games in many high street shops such as Woolworths, W.H. Smiths, HMV, Virgin Megastore, and of course those dedicated outlets such as Game and Electronics Boutique.

For nearly the whole of the 1990s I was lucky enough to work in the centre of Southampton with a branch of both Game and Electronics Boutique within easy walking distance of my office, so more often than not my lunch break comprised of a little walk around both to see what was happening. These visits were always fun and there was invariably something new to see. New games would be available to try with a number of gaming stations set up. Other screens would be running demos of soon to be released and highly anticipated games. The shops would be stocked to the gills, full of games for multiple platforms, with both new and second hand options available. There would often be bargain bins to rummage through, or tables piled up with used PS1 games. The staff were both friendly and extremely knowledgeable and a visit was always an excellent use of my half an hour break.

In 2002 Game took over the Electronics Boutique stores and with many high street stockists not carrying games any more, became almost the only place in the town centre for your average gamer to shop. However my patronage has reduced gradually but consistently over time to the point now where I don’t even visit. The shop has changed so much and now has so little in common with my gaming interests that it simply isn’t worth my time.

My systems as a (predominantly) retro gamer are at least one generation back, so the Xbox One, PS4 and WiiU are the most modern consoles I own. I also still have a Sony PS1, 2 and 3, Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo N64, GameCube and Wii, an original Microsoft Xbox, Xbox 360 and of course my trusty Commodore Amiga all still hooked up. But if I want a game for any of them I am better off visiting my only local independent retro game dealer and, failing that, I will try searching CEX, eBay, Gumtree or Facebook Marketplace. Nowadays Game doesn’t cater for anything other than the most modern systems. There are no bargain bins. No second hand retro games. Yet with the popularity of retro gaming you would have thought there is a market there to be exploited. Certainly they seem to have the space, since half their shop window display is taken up with used phones and iPads. But it seems that ‘current generation or nothing’ is their new motto. The atmosphere in the shops is sterile too; you no longer have any feeling that this is supposed to be a place of fun. Try and talk to an assistant and all they do is try and sell you extended insurance or disk cover. Everything on the shelves is vacuum packed and fifty quid.

So what has changed? Is it me? Have I simply become an old git? Is it my refusal to continually fork out the £300 plus that is required each time a new system is released, so instead enjoy my gaming in a much more cost efficient way, always staying one generation behind? Is it my fault that Game no longer has any interest in me as a customer? I don’t know, but I am not alone. Retro gaming is becoming increasingly fashionable; its popularity has exploded in the past few years with the prices of some older systems and games skyrocketing. Why has the ethos of the store changed to the extent that they have effectively alienated a significant proportion of their potential customer base?

I can’t pretend that I have the answer. But what I will say is this. If you are a retro gamer, look up and look after your local independent dealers. Because like the original Game stores, you will miss them badly when they are gone…

AG 25/06/2021

Queen

Lights, Cameras, Action!

Alan chats with Steve Price, Video Director for Queen among many others...

Queen are an astonishing band. Without question one of the greatest rock groups this country has ever produced, with a back catalogue of epic tracks beyond compare. Their first Greatest Hits album has been streamed over 1.23 billion times and recently celebrated 1,000 weeks in the Official Album Chart, making them the first band to achieve this feat.

I was fortunate enough to be in attendance at Knebworth on 9th August 1986 to witness Freddie Mercury’s last every live performance with the band, before his tragic passing in 1991. Since then Brian May and Roger Taylor have continued to keep the Queen flame burning bright, initially by touring with Paul Rogers, and for the last ten years performing live with Adam Lambert, bringing his remarkable vocals and astonishing stage presence to the party. I am a huge fan of Adam; he has achieved what very few vocalists could manage, performing those classic songs with a vocal range and quality that absolutely does them justice, and with a confidence and aura that literally makes the hairs on your neck stand up.

In doing so, they have brought Queen’s music to a whole new audience. And in the years since Freddie’s passing, their live shows have become increasingly spectacular, as technological advances have turned what was simply a music concert 30 years ago into the hugely impressive audio-visual spectacle that it is today.

I most recently saw Queen and Adam Lambert at the London O2 Arena in June of this year. After the tour ended, Steve Price, the band’s Video Director, was kind enough to talk to me about the changes he has seen over the years.

Steve, thank you so much for sparing us some of your time. Can you tell us a little about your role with Queen?

I'm primarily employed as their live video director, which means I direct the camera coverage of the show to the live screens, although over the last eight years my role has expanded to include shooting and editing much of their social media content, documentaries, live streams, promotional videos, commercials, archive material, backstage stuff, all sorts really. But yes, my main job is to direct the live screen coverage on tour.

How did you get into that field of work?

I spent the 1990s making music videos. We shot everything on film in those days but the entire production industry was turned on its head in the early 2000s when everything went digital, so all my years of film experience quickly became redundant, budgets were slashed and suddenly anyone who had access to a video camera was a music video director. Then one day in early 2005 I was walking past HMV in Oxford Street [in London] when I bumped into a mate who was the drummer in my first music video 15 years earlier. He was now a lighting designer working for a new band called Razorlight and they were about to do an in-store gig - he invited me to meet everyone, we exchanged numbers and I left.

A couple of months later Razorlight were gearing up for a UK arena tour and he phoned and asked me if I wanted to be their director. I'd never shot a live gig before but I pretended I had and I got the job. I bluffed my way through it and it went ok, and within a few months I was working for the Arctic Monkeys, Faithless, The Fratellis and other bands. I was in the right place at the right time, I recognised the opportunity and I took it. If I hadn't been walking along Oxford Street that day I have no idea what I'd be doing now!

What other bands / artists have you worked with over the years?

I've toured with many big acts, but that's the nature of video directing, you work almost exclusively at arena/stadium/festival level so most acts are either well established or definitely on the way up by the time I get called in. In the last 10 years I've toured with Beyonce, Mumford and Sons, Bastille, Tame Impala, The 1975, Jessie J, Arctic Monkeys, Faithless...lots of bands really.

The show now is utterly spectacular. You must have so much kit to transport! How long does it take to set everything up, and how many people are in the crew?

There are around 70 to 80 touring crew, all working within a specific department and with a particular role. Those departments include Video, Lighting, Audio, Backline, Rigging, Pyrotechnics, Catering, Production Management, Carpentry, Merchandise, Automation, Wardrobe, and Security - and when you add the band, their management, their PAs and personal security there's over 100 people on the tour.

And each venue provides us with an extra team of local crew - sometimes up to 150 people - who come in and help load in and load out.

The first crew get there at about 6am and the entire show is built and ready for sound check by lunchtime. That includes unloading over 30 trucks and hanging over 50 tons of gear in the roof. It's like a military exercise. After the show finishes at about 10.30pm it's all loaded out and on the way to the next venue by 3am.

I bet the crew were particularly impressed with whoever scheduled two nights in Birmingham right in the middle of a ten night stint at the London O2?! I understand that some bands with large shows have two sets of kit so while one show is happening the next is already being constructed. Is that how you do it?

No we have only one rig - and although we sold out 10 nights at the O2 we had to load out several times because other bands were performing on our days off. The upshot of that is that I got free tickets to see Barry Manilow at the O2 and he was brilliant!

What changes have you seen in your field over the years?

The live music industry has been revolutionised by digital technology over the last decade, especially in the lighting and video departments. When I started in 2005 video was just 2 back-projected screens - one each side of the stage - and three or four cameras, mainly to magnify the artists for the benefit of the people at the back of the audience. LED technology has changed all that and now you'd be hard pushed to find a major production that isn't designed around multiple LED screens.

So now, rather than mixing one cut to two screens with three cameras, I'm mixing two or three cuts at the same time to over a dozen screens of different shapes and sizes with 12 cameras, often mixed in with pre-made content and live effects. It's quite complicated at times, it requires a lot of concentration and I have a headache at the end of every show!

Presumably as bands play larger venues the video and lighting show becomes increasingly important? Is there a pressure for a show to be constantly bigger and better than what has gone before?

Yes there's a kind of arms-race in the world of large scale concert design. Like video, lighting has been set free by digital technology, with lights these days being more versatile than they have ever been, plus being LED means they don't use much power so you can use loads of them, with the added advantage they don't give out heat so it's much more comfortable on stage for the artist.

But it's worth remembering that no matter how big your ideas are, your show still has to be rigged in a day and transported in a given number of trucks, so the trick is to design impressive shows within those parameters.

What technology do you use to control it all?

I operate a vision mixing desk during the show - often a Ross Carbonite 3ME desk - and my pictures are sent to a media server (usually D3 Disguise) before being mapped to the screens. It's usually in the media servers where the effects and content are added too, although we still use some old style effects straight out of the desk.

How much of what the crowd sees is computer controlled and how much is still manually operated?

That's a good question. Many shows these days - probably most shows - are time-coded and that means the lighting and video content, and automation cues (and more recently the video cameras) can be pre-programmed and triggered automatically during the show. Queen and Adam Lambert don't use timecode - everything you see and hear is live, there's no timecode, no click tracks, no playback, no cheating at all, it's 100% live so all the lighting and video cues are triggered manually. And that is my favourite way to work - proper old-school live rock and roll - you have to keep your wits about you, anything could go wrong at any moment, it's very exciting.

How do you go about producing all the different computer generated imagery that compliments and gets mixed with the live feeds? And how do you go about live testing it?

Most of the content is designed and produced by specialist companies. We usually have at least two weeks of rehearsals for each tour and that's when we work out how to make the cameras and content work together on the screen. It's quite a fluid process, sometimes we find the content doesn't work in the way we intended, or it turns out to be more suited to a different part of the show, or sometimes it's much better than we anticipated and we may decide to kill cameras at that point. Most of Queen and Adam Lambert’s content is made in advance and then remotely worked on during rehearsals, whereas with Tame Impala for example we have a team of content creators right there in the rehearsal studio.

Presumably you get your fair share of technical gremlins to battle with during the odd performance? Have you ever had a nightmare scenario with the failure of something essential?

Sometimes our video cameras or screens break down during the show but it's a rare occurrence. The trick is to fix it as quickly, silently and calmly as possible. To some extent we are judged by how we deal with things when they go wrong, and I'm lucky to work with the best and most experienced technicians in the industry. I never have to worry about the tech side of things because I know my crew can handle anything that's thrown their way. I've seen nightmare YouTube videos with camera operators falling off the stage and whatnot, but luckily nothing like that has ever happened on one of my tours.

It must be such a relief to finally get the show back on the road in Europe after all the postponements because of the Covid pandemic?

The Queen tour is renowned as the happiest tour in the world, the crew vibe is incredible, we're like a family and the disappointment of having it postponed for two years in a row was immense, so when we finally got out there earlier this year it was just wonderful really, the best tour we've ever done.

Have you got a favourite venue, either for atmosphere or ease of setup?

In the UK my favourite arena is Nottingham; it's just the right size to feel epic in the big moments and intimate in the smaller moments. And I love the Hydro in Glasgow, but that might be because I love Glasgow so much. The Albert Hall is always a cool place to work in but I'm forever getting lost backstage because the corridors are curved and I lose track of where I am all the time. Overseas I always look forward to the Ziggodome in Amsterdam because it's purpose built for concerts and is a joy to work in. The Hollywood Bowl is always good because, well, it's the Hollywood Bowl.

Finally, the schedule is unforgiving; I think I have read that the last leg of the tour encompassed 27 shows in 14 countries in just under two months! While it must be an amazing experience I am guessing you were glad to see your own bed?

Actually it was 36 shows. I went home for two weeks and now I'm in rehearsals for a USA tour with Roxy Music. I shot Rex Orange County in Gunnersbury Park last week and I'm directing The 1975 at Leeds and Reading later this month. I get back from America in October and go straight into rehearsals with Bastille. These are busy times and at 58 years old I'm not done with it yet. I love it.

Steve – thank you so much for your time, and for doing such a stellar job in creating unforgettable experiences for audiences all around the world!

AG - Dec 2022

Featured in Pixel Addict magazine, issue 8.